


Stay

by jeeno2



Series: Reylo One-Shots [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Office, F/M, Fluff, Pining, Sharing a Bed, Smut, oh no one bed what do???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-09-25 11:20:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17120411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeeno2/pseuds/jeeno2
Summary: He opens his mouth to tell her goodnight, but before he can get out the words, she says, very quickly: “You should come with us.”Ben’s heart stops beating.“Um.” He runs a hand through his hair. He can’t have heard her right. “What?”“A bunch of us are going.” She smiles at him; he can feel that smile all the way down to his toes. “From work. It should be fun.”---------(In which Ben comes along on a weekend trip, and there aren't enough rooms. Or beds.)





	Stay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hipgrab (merrymegtargaryen)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merrymegtargaryen/gifts).



> Happy holidays, hipgrab! I hope you enjoy this. :)

Ben wakes up in the middle of the night to a soft, warm, solid shape pressed up against him.

_This has to be a dream_ , he thinks, mind still groggy with sleep. He’s not really here, this can’t  _really_ be happening, because—

Rey Johnson rolls over and, still sleeping, throws a slender arm around his neck. Pulls him closer. Her small, shapely breasts are  _right there_ , separated from his chest by nothing but his t-shirt and her own thin, cotton nightgown.

The top of her head is tucked snugly beneath his chin. Her hair smells incredible. Like flowers. Like the shampoo she must have used earlier, in the shower. Rey snores softly, and Ben can feel each of her exhalations against his throat.

It occurs to him, suddenly, that he is going to die.

Because as she breathes, and he breathes, and she holds him, and he  _doesn’t_ move away from her in this too-narrow bed, Ben knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this is very, very real. And that it is probably the worst thing that has ever happened to him.

 

* * *

 

_Everything starts to go off the rails at 7:38 on Monday morning._

_For starters, there are other people in the break room. Ben’s usually the first one in the office on Mondays. He’s usually the first one in the office_ every  _day. Today, though, his traditional cup of quiet, solitary, early Monday morning coffee is interrupted by laughter, and the excited chitchat of several of his coworkers, at least an hour earlier than he usually has to start enduring them._

_“Okay, okay. Tahoe. So: who should we invite?” Poe Dameron, an insufferable coworker Ben suspects was only put on this earth to annoy him, is flipping through contacts on his phone as he talks. Ben does his best to stay out of whatever conversation he’s just walked into as he pours himself a mug of hot, terrible coffee from the communal pot._

_“Hm.” Finn, another coworker, leans against the drawer Ben needs to get into for a spoon. Finn’s arms are folded across his chest as he ponders whatever Poe just asked him. Ben glares at Finn wordlessly, hoping the younger man will get the hint and move out of the way. Finn doesn’t move out of the way. Ben’s irritation grows. “Well, Rose. Of course.”_

_“Of course.”_

_“Oh, I know!” Finn is still leaning against the drawer. How Ben has managed to work here this long without murdering anyone is beyond him. “How about Rey Johnson?”_

_At the mention of Rey’s name, Ben nearly drops his mug._

_“Rey Johnson?” Poe looks up from his phone, puzzled._

He doesn’t know her, _Ben thinks._

_And then_ : Good.

_“Rey’s the new girl in IT.”_

_“Ah! Right.” Poe nods. “Yeah, sure. She seems fun.”_

_“She is.”_

_Ben storms out of the kitchen without his spoon, gripping his mug so tightly his knuckles are white._

 

* * *

 

Ben stares at himself in the tiny bathroom mirror in the tiny hotel bathroom, palms flat on the counter as he tries to take some calming breaths.

This is fine.

Everything is  _fine_.

He told Rey he’d sleep on the floor. And he  _will_ sleep on the floor. He will ignore every single instinct in his stupid, traitorous body that is  _screaming_ at him to get back into that bed with that girl right now. He will grab a pillow and a blanket from the closet, just like he told her he would the minute the nature of this… situation became clear.

And he will sleep. on. the.  _floor_.

Ben closes his eyes and lets himself remember, just for a moment, what it been like to hold her. The way it had felt to curve, mold, his body around hers as she slept. How  _right_ she had felt in his arms.

But no.  _No_. She hadn’t known what she was doing when she pulled him closer. She’d been  _asleep_. And them sharing a bed had not been part of the arrangement. He has no fucking idea how he ended up there, given that he’s pretty sure he  _did_ start the night on the floor.

Didn’t he?

Either way: it’s not a mistake he’ll make a second time.

“Floor, Solo,” he warns his reflection. He gives himself a stern nod. He can do this. “You’re going to sleep on the floor.”

 

* * *

 

_“Is now a good time?”_

_Ben jumps a little in his chair at the sound of Rey’s voice, despite his promise to himself that this time, he wouldn’t act like an idiot when she got here._

_He takes a deep breath, and turns so he’s facing the doorway to his office. Rey Johnson_ —  _the incredibly smart, incredibly pretty girl his terrible company just hired to help keep their technology running properly_ —  _is leaning against the doorframe with a casual, effortless grace that never fails to leave him breathless. Her slender arms are folded across her chest, obscuring whatever graphic might be on her t-shirt today._

_(He loves her t-shirts. He thinks he might just love everything about her, if he’s being honest.)_

_“Um. No, actually, it’s really not a good time.” He knows he sounds irritable. Irritable is_ kind  _of his default setting. But whenever Ben is his usual, irritable self in front of Rey he hates himself a little more than usual for it. “It doesn’t matter, though. Because I need internet connectivity to finish this report, so…”_

_He trails off, gesturing wordlessly, helplessly, at his computer._

_“You’re... the best IT person we’ve ever had,” he adds. Which is the God’s-honest truth. As far as he’s aware nobody with even half her skill set has ever worked here before. “And I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Help me. Please?”_

_Rey’s eyes go a little wide at his outburst. Her cheeks flush a rosy pink._

_“Yeah, yeah. Of course. I’m… I’m on it.” She comes into his office, then puts her hand right on the back of Ben’s chair. He tries, and utterly fails, to ignore how the proximity of her hand to the back of his head makes his heart race and his palms start to sweat._

_She gives him a meaningful look. Clearly she wants him to go get a coffee, or take a smoke break or something, so she can be alone with his computer and run a diagnostic. But she’s just…_ looking  _at him, and she has this adorable dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose and on each of her cheeks, and it takes Ben longer than it really should take a grown man to stand up from his chair, unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth and say, “Thanks for coming so quickly.” He swallows. And then adds, in a much smaller voice: “I’d be lost without you.”_

_Rey turns to face him, and gives him a small, tentative smile._

_By the time he’s made it across the room he can already hear her fingers flying over his keyboard. He doesn’t let himself turn to look at her when he leaves._

 

* * *

 

The carpeting in this hotel room can’t be more than a few millimeters thick. The floor is hard and cold underneath him, and Ben gets a crick in his neck before he’s even lain on it ten minutes.

He flops over onto his other side with a huff and tries to beat the thin pillow beneath his head into a more comfortable shape. It doesn’t really work, but he lies back down anyway, giving sleep another futile try.

He doesn’t look over his shoulder at Rey, still sleeping peacefully in the bed he just vacated.

He won’t let himself.

 

* * *

 

_“Are you coming to Tahoe this weekend?”_

_Ben stops in his tracks and slowly turns until he’s facing Rey. She’s still got on her character t-shirt from earlier (Arya Stark today, apparently; he hadn’t realized she was a Game of Thrones fan too). Her eyes dart over him quickly, lingering just a beat too long on his shoulders and the way his ridiculously rumpled suit jacket clings to them._

_He cringes, self-conscious about how stressed out and bad he must look right now. But then, it’s past seven, which means usually, he’s the only one still here._

_He blinks at her stupidly for a minute, unable to keep from wondering how Rey usually spends her evenings. She seems like the sort of person who would have lots of friends. Maybe she’s having dinner with one of them tonight, when she’s finally done with whatever project is keeping her here late._

_When Rey starts to rock back and forth on her heels, but doesn’t make any move to leave, Ben finally remembers she asked him a question. She probably expects him to say something in response to it, like a normal person._

_“Oh,” he says. He fidgets with his tie, his collar suddenly too tight. “Um. Tahoe? No.” And then: “Why?”_

_“Oh,” Rey says. Her shoulders sag a little and… she looks tired. He wonders if they’re working her too hard. She’s young_ —  _can’t be more than twenty-five or twenty-six_ —  _and she really shouldn’t be working so_ —  _“I just thought... you might be coming.”_

_“Ah. Well.” Ben shoves his hands in his pockets, just for something to do with them. “I’m… I’m not.”_  

_“Oh.”_

_There’s a long pause after that where neither of them speak. Ben hates long pauses more than just about anything in the world. He inherited none of his parents’ enviable social skills, and whenever there’s a lull in conversation, Ben never knows what the hell he’s supposed to do._

_After what feels like another hour of silence, Ben decides Rey must not have anything else to say. He opens his mouth to tell her goodnight, but before he can get out the words, she says, very quickly: “You should come with us.”_

_Ben’s heart stops beating._

_“Um.” He runs a hand through his hair. He can’t have heard her right. “What?”_

_“A... bunch of us are going.” She smiles at him; he can feel that smile all the way down to his toes. “From work. It should be fun.”_

_Ben swallows, trying to get his mouth to catch up with the maelstrom of thoughts whirling around in his brain._

_“O...kay,” he eventually hears himself say. Even though he’s always hated the mountains. It’s too cold up there, and the elevation change makes his ears pop. “I’ll come.”_

_Rey’s smile widens, showing off a mouthful of perfect, white teeth._

_“Great,” she says. She sounds_ —  _looks_ —  _like she means it._

_“Yeah,” Ben breathes, a little lightheaded. “Great.”_

 

* * *

 

Ben can’t sleep.

The problem, as it happens, is that Rey snores.

It isn’t Ben’s first time sharing a room with someone who snores. Growing up he shared a room with his Uncle Luke on several memorably awful family vacations—and Uncle Luke, as his mother used to put it, could snore the paint off a horse.

Rey’s snoring is... different, though. Not unpleasant. It’s kind of melodic, actually, the way her chest rises and falls in time with her breathing. The problem is, it makes it impossible for Ben to forget she’s here. Because he can _hear_ her, he can’t stop thinking about what it had felt like to wake up holding her in his arms, his chin resting on top of her head, her arms around his neck.

If he could somehow pretend Rey wasn’t in this room with him, he thinks he would probably be able to drift off to sleep down here on this horrible floor eventually. But her presence, just a few feet away from where he’s lying, is a visceral, impossible-to-ignore thing, inflaming every single one of his senses. He can hear, can almost  _feel_ , every single breath she takes like a knife to the heart.

No matter what he does, no matter how much he tosses and turns, sleep will not come.

(He thinks, briefly, of touching himself. Of quietly stroking himself until he comes apart in his hand. It’s the only cure for insomnia that’s ever really worked for him. But he immediately dismisses the idea as repellant. He can’t do that here. Not with Rey sleeping just a few feet away.

He’s not  _that_ much of a pervert.

But no sooner do the twin thoughts of  _Rey_ and  _jerking off_ cross his mind than his cock—which has never taken instruction from him very well—twitches once, hard, demanding, inside his sleeping pants. Letting its opinion on the matter be known in no uncertain terms.

Ben throws both arms over his face and groans softly.)

 

* * *

 

_When Ben meets up with them at the office that Saturday morning, carrying his duffel bag, Poe Dameron’s eyes go very wide._

_“You’re... coming with us,” he says, incredulous._

_Finn at least has the decency to look embarrassed over not inviting Ben in the first place. Rey, though, just continues to smile her sunny smile, oblivious to the potential future ramifications of Ben and Poe spending the next four hours together inside the same small car._

_“Yeah,” Ben confirms. He folds his arms across his chest and steps a little closer to Poe. “I’m coming.”_

_“Huh,” Poe says. He shakes his head. “I mean. Whatever, I guess.”_

_In retrospect, Ben probably should have known Dameron would be this way. He’s always been an insufferable jerk._

_In_ further  _retrospect, Ben probably should have asked Rey some follow-up questions when she invited him. Such as: Did you tell our coworkers_ —  _who, for the most part, really don’t like me_ —  _that I was coming, too?_

_In further_ further  _retrospect… Well. Maybe he shouldn’t have even accepted this invitation in the first place. Rey was only trying to be nice, he knows that_ —  _but if his own pathetic personal history is any guide, time spent with people with good intentions rarely ends well for him._

_“Rose just texted me. She’ll meet us at the hotel,” Rey announces. If she’s aware of Ben’s inner turmoil she shows no sign of it. Her hair is different today_ —  _it’s down, loose around her shoulders, instead of up in its usual three buns. Her hair looks pretty this way. But then, she always looks pretty. She pockets her phone and claps Finn on the back. “You’ll see her soon, yeah?”_

_“Yeah,” Finn says, sounding a little glum. “Honestly, though_ —  _it’s just as well Rose isn’t here for this.” He jerks his head towards Poe, who’s currently glaring at Ben out of the corner of his eye._

_“Here for what?” Rey asks innocently._

_Finn gives Rey a sideways glance. “You’ll see.”_

_They pile into Finn’s car after that._

_Rey slides easily into the back of the vehicle, and then looks up at Ben expectantly, eyes bright and shining._

_She pats the seat beside her._

_Ben’s large hands grip either side of the car’s door frame like a lifeline as it slowly dawns on him that she… wants him to sit back there with her._

_“Um. What?” he croaks._

_“Lots of space for you back here,” she says. Though that’s not actually true. Finn’s car is a Prius, and barely big enough for two people, let alone four. Ben hasn’t been in the backseat of a car this size since he was thirteen years old_ —  _and much, much smaller._

_But then Rey gives Ben another smile_ —  _one that reaches her eyes; one that makes his stomach swoop_ —  _and scoots over a little bit to make room for him. The next thing he knows, Ben’s folding himself in half and squeezing himself into the little car’s even littler backseat, all the while convinced he’s making a terrible mistake._

_And it is a mistake. No matter how much space Ben tries to make for her, no matter how far over to the side he tries to squeeze, their thighs are still touching after they’ve fastened their seatbelts. Her legs are longer than he thought, he realizes_ —  _tanned, and slender, and_ —

_Yeah. This was definitely a mistake._

_“This will be... cozy,” Rey murmurs, as Finn pulls away from the curb. Her cheeks are flushed now, for some reason, even though it’s not cold today. Her eyes are fixed firmly on her hands, folded carefully in her lap._

_Every time they go over a bump or a pothole on their way up the mountain, the little car jostles them so much that they bump, hard, into each other. Rey has to brace herself against Ben’s leg with her hands every time it happens, just to keep from going flying._

_“Sorry,” she murmurs, under her breath, the fourth time it happens, when her hands land halfway up his thigh, just a few inches below where his seatbelt crosses his lap._

_“‘It’s… it’s fine,” Ben lies, hoping his face doesn’t look as red as it feels, praying to every god that might be listening that his body doesn’t_ react  _to her hands on his body like this._

_Less than an hour into the trip, and Ben is already convinced he’s not going to survive it._

 

* * *

 

“Hey.”

Ben, startled, turns his head in the direction of Rey’s voice. She’s peering down at him from the edge of the bed, chin propped up on her folded arms.  

Ben swallows and shifts a little on the floor. He hopes her night vision isn’t good enough to see how hard he is right now beneath his thin blanket. “Hey.” And then, like an idiot: “You’re, um. Awake.”

She laughs. “You’re awake, too.” Her voice is thick, a little croaky with sleep. She scoots closer to the edge and blinks down at him, her eyes luminous in the dark.

A small smile plays on her lips.

The sudden urge to rise up and kiss those lips, to taste the shape of her smile, nearly undoes him.

With a strength Ben had no idea he possessed, he tears his eyes away from her and looks down at the floor.

“Yeah,” he concedes. “I guess… I guess I am awake.”

“Ben,” she says, very soft. “You don’t have to—”

She trails off. A pause stretches between them, their room now so quiet Ben can hear people down the hall making their drunken way back to their rooms. Rey starts playing with the fraying edge of the hotel’s ratty bedspread, her nimble fingers making quick work of the threads.

Eventually, Ben asks, in a voice that doesn’t sound like his: “I don’t have to... what?”

She glances down at him. She looks away.

“You don’t… have to sleep on the floor,” she murmurs.

 

* * *

 

_The hotel—motel, really—sn’t one Ben’s stayed in before. Or one he’d ever choose to stay in, if it had been up to him. It’s about twenty minutes southwest of Tahoe, just off the freeway, and along a dirt road Ben thinks hadn’t existed the last time he was here._

_Fox News is playing on the television when they walk into the lobby. The woman behind the counter_ —  _about fifty, with long, greying hair tied back in a ponytail_ —  _eyes them suspiciously over the top of her magazine when they walk in._

_“We have a reservation for three rooms,” Poe says. “Under ‘Dameron.’”_

_The woman turns to the ancient computer on her desk. She scans the monitor. “I only have you down for two rooms.”_

_Rey frowns. She looks at Ben with an expression that makes his stomach churn._

_“Two rooms?” Rey says to the woman. “I think there’s been a mistake. There’s five of us on this trip, see, and_ — _”_

_“No mistake,” the woman says, eyes on the screen. She taps the monitor with a long, manicured fingernail. “It says right here: Poe Dameron, two nights.” She looks at Rey. “Two rooms.”_

_“But we definitely booked three,” Poe says, his voice rising. “I booked them myself. I told the person who took the call that —_   _”_

_“I’m sorry, young man,” the woman says, cutting him off. “I don’t know who told you we had three rooms available this weekend. But we’ve only got you down for two. And other than those two rooms, we’re booked solid the rest of the week.” She looks at each of them in turn. “So is every hotel and motel for twenty miles in every direction on account of the festival.”_

_Poe turns to look helplessly at Finn, who, in turn, turns to look at Rey._

_Rey looks over to Ben, and Ben_ —

_Ben suddenly has a very bad feeling about all of this._

 

* * *

 

 He can’t have heard her right.

“What did you just say?”

Rey averts her eyes, and goes back to fiddling with the loose threads on the bedspread.

“It’s just the floor looks… really uncomfortable.” She bites her lip, and he stares at her mouth, and,  _god_ , if he thought he’d wanted to kiss her before… “You shouldn’t have to sleep down there.”

“Well I’m hardly going to ask  _you_ to sleep down here,” Ben says. The idea of him taking the bed and her taking the floor… it’s ridiculous. He’s not an  _asshole_. Regardless of what Dameron thinks. “I’m not sleeping in a bed while you’re on the floor.”

“Ben,” Rey says. She bites her lower lip again, and….

He swallows. “Yeah?”

“I don’t think you’re understanding what I’m trying to say.”

 

* * *

 

_The room is small. Small, and kind of dirty. Just like the rest of this motel._

_And there’s only one bed._

This is fine _, Ben tells himself, trying to stave off a full-blown panic attack._

_This is going to be fine._

_“This is fine,” Rey says, once Finn and Poe have left for the room they’ll be sharing with Rose. But she doesn’t sound convinced. She also can’t seem to look at him right now_ —  _which makes sense, given that she just found out she’ll be sharing a room with a weird guy she barely knows on a trip she probably regrets mentioning to him in the first place._

_“Yes,” Ben says, his voice breaking on the word. He nods, trying to portray a confidence he doesn’t feel. “Fine.”_

_“Why did the others insist you and I share a room?” Ben adds, in a shaking voice that doesn’t sound like his own. Just for something to say to fill the awkward silence. He knows why they did it, of course. If he and Poe shared a room one or both of them would be dead by morning. And Finn hasn’t seen his girlfriend in weeks, so of course he wasn’t going to volunteer to stay with Ben Solo, office outcast._

_Can Rey tell how much he’s freaking out right now? He feels like the most obvious person in the world._

_But if she can tell, she doesn’t show it. “I’m... not sure why,” Rey says, very slowly._

_She looks at Ben with a blank expression._

_He wonders if this is what it feels like to lose one’s mind._

 

* * *

 

 “What  _are_ you trying to say?” Ben asks. Because she isn’t making sense.

By way of response, Rey reaches towards him, very slowly—and then gently cups his face with her hand.

His blood turns to fire in his veins, realization hitting him.

“Ben,” she whispers.

 

* * *

 

_"I’ll sleep on the floor,” he blurts out. It goes without saying that he’ll sleep on the floor. Still_ —  _he feels a little better now that he’s said it._

_Rey nods half-heartedly, still not looking at him. How much does she hate him for this? Probably a lot._

_“I’m going to go… um.” She pauses. “Take a shower.”_

_Ben sits down heavily on the room’s single bed and nods, watching as she grabs her toiletry bag from her suitcase, crosses the room, and then disappears into the bathroom._

_“Okay,” he calls after her, feeling like an idiot, shell shocked, like he’s about a minute away from losing his mind, or like any minute now his alarm is going to go off and he’s going to wake up in his own bed in his own apartment from this crazy, lurid nightmare of a dream._

_He hears the quiet_ snick  _of the bathroom door as it latches shut, and then the soft sound of the spray from the shower as she turns the water on. He tells himself he should leave. Go for a walk, go for a drive_ —  _hell, go_ anywhere  _, do_ anything  _, other than sit here while Rey takes a shower_ —  _a_ naked  _shower_ —  _n the next room._

_Rey starts to hum, he hears the shower curtain pushed aside_ —  _and he won’t imagine her in that shower, naked and washing herself, running a soapy cloth over her face, her back, rivers of soapy water running down between her breasts_ —  _because he is_ not  _that kind of person, absolutely_ not  _that kind of person, and_ —

_Ben lies down on the bed and pulls a pillow over his head, groaning._

_He is the most pathetic person in the history of the world._

 

* * *

 

“Are you… are you sure?”

Ben’s voice sounds shaky and small to his ears. He hates himself for sounding, for  _being,_ so afraid.

Rey just laughs again. It’s a warm sound. She takes his hand, and her hand is warm, too. Everything about Rey is always so  _warm_.

Maybe that’s why he’s so drawn to her, he thinks, feverishly. He’s been cold for as long as he can remember.

“I’m sure,” Rey says. She squeezes his hand a little. The gentle pressure is enough, all on its own, to make his whole arm erupt in gooseflesh. She tugs him up off the floor and into bed beside her. He goes, willingly. “That floor looks awful.”

He nods, grateful --and terrified. “Um. Yeah. It… it kind of is.” She lies down next to him, then.  _Right_ next to him. She doesn’t bother trying to make extra space. She’s wearing a nightgown that doesn’t even go down to her knees, and he can feel her thighs pressed up against  _his_ thighs, their legs separated now by nothing but his thin cotton sleeping pants.

She rolls over, then, to face him. She touches his cheek. Caresses it gently with the backs of her fingers.

He never knew his face had so many nerve endings before. It feels like the entire universe has contracted down to the place where she is touching him. To the place where he is being touched, by her.

His eyes flutter closed. He stops breathing.  

“Ben,” she says again. She turns his chin so that he has to look at her. Her eyes are clear, and so bright. Warm.

He can feel her sweet, warm breath on his lips.

He closes his eyes again. And he nods, beginning to understand.

“Rey,” he whispers.

 

* * *

 

_The back of Ben’s head hits the headboard with a loud_ thunk _, startling him awake._

_He blinks dumbly at his surroundings for a few moments, bleary and disoriented._

_Small hotel room._

_A couple of duffel bags, by the door._

_The sound of someone in the shower..._

_Fuck._

_He bolts upright, remembering where he is. And what’s going on. It feels like he’s been asleep for hours, but Rey’s still showering (Rey’s still showering in there still naked still showering_ fuck  _), so he can’t have been out for more than a few minutes._

_He yawns, and stretches. He’s more tired than he thought. The past three weeks of late nights and early mornings have apparently caught up with him more than he realized._

_Maybe he’ll take a short nap here before figuring out exactly how he’s going to survive the next few days._

_He changes into a t-shirt and a pair of pajama pants as fast as he can, eyes on the bathroom door to make sure Rey doesn’t slip out without him noticing._

_He’ll lie back down on the bed for a bit, he tells himself. Just until she comes out. Once she’s out of the shower he’ll sleep on the floor. Just like he promised._

 

* * *

 

It’s been a long time since Ben’s been intimate with anyone. Years, probably—though by now it’s been so long he’s lost track.

Rey’s delicate hands are in his hair and her lips are  _everywhere_ —on his lips, along the underside of his jaw, down his neck, his collarbone—and he’s distracted enough by all of this, by her, by her hands lifting his shirt over his head, by the way her body feels, lying on top of his, so light and yet so substantial because she is  _everything_ —that when she speaks again it takes him a minute to realize what she’s asking him.

She asks again.

“Why did you leave?”

Her nightgown is off, now, too—tossed to the side at some point, crumpled up on the floor next to the blanket he’s no longer using—and her breasts are so beautiful, round,  _perfect_. He cups one in his shaking hand and marvels at how perfectly it fills his palm. Her skin here is soft, like silk, as he nuzzles her with his cheek, unable to believe they are doing this. That this… absolutely radiant girl is allowing him to do this.

“I’m… I’m here,” he mumbles, dazed. Why did he  _leave_? He’s not going anywhere. He couldn’t leave if he tried. Touching her with only his hands is no longer enough, so he tilts his chin and licks a gentle circle around one of her pert, perfect little nipples. The sound she makes when he sucks it into his mouth—part moan, part hiss—will haunt his dreams. “I’m right here.”

She pulls back from him, her hair cascading past her shoulders like a dark corona. Like something out of a fever dream. She’s straddling his hips, leaning back on her haunches, breathing hard. It’s dark in this room—too dark; Ben wishes they’d had the foresight to turn on a light at some point because he would kill to see her better, astride him like this, but there is no way in hell he’s going to leave this bed again now that he’s back in it.

“I mean, earlier,” she clarifies. She gingerly touches his thigh, slides her hand up, and up, until it’s inches from where he’s already desperate for it to be. He closes his eyes. Grits his teeth. Tries to hold on, not to lose it completely before they’ve even gotten started. ( _How is this happening_?  _This cannot be happening_.)

“Earlier,” he repeats, still not understanding.

She slides her hand up a little more and he’s past reason.

“Ben,” she says. “When I came back from my shower you were sleeping on the bed. I curled up beside you and… and I thought maybe you’d… you’d changed your mind about the floor.”

He pulls back and looks at her, stunned. “Changed my mind?” He swallows. Tries to make sense of what she’s telling him, but his brain isn’t working anymore, and… “What?”

“I never wanted you to sleep on the floor, Ben.” Her words are shy, confessional--but her eyes are bright, fearless. The opposite of shy. She pulls him free of his sleeping pants. Tugs them off, and away. She scoots up on the bed, and lines him up at her entrance.

He gasps, even as he swells impossibly harder in her hand. “Rey—”

“ _This_ , right here, is what I’d hoped would happen, when I invited you on this trip.”

It’s been years since he’s done this. Years, and too many heartbreaks to count. But her words, her confession, the  _look_ she’s giving him tap into nearly forgotten muscle memory, and he springs into action. In a single, fluid move, he flips them so that she’s lying on her back, legs spread wide for him, eyes dazed and fixed firmly on his.

And then, he ruins it.

“But…  _why_?” He’s panting heavily now, his tip is nudging at her entrance and he can  _feel_ how wet she is but this just… women like her don’t  _do_ this with men like him, and—

She shifts her hips beneath him irresistibly, and it’s all over. Raw, unfiltered instinct overrides both his better judgment and his short-circuiting brain. Ben moves on a loud grunt, penetrating her in a single thrust, every cell in his body reveling in the way her soft, wet flesh yields for him.

_Oh._

Rey rears back on the bed beneath him, her body in sync with his as he pounds into her, his fists white knuckled in the sheets on either side of her head as he moves, and she moves, and the wave starts its slow build inside him. Her hands are at his back, scrabbling for purchase, leaving claw marks as he uses her, and  _fuck_ it’s been so long since this has happened to him but  _goddamnit,_ this is as natural and necessary as walking, as  _breathing_. He never wants to go without it again. Without her again.

“Are you close—” he grits out, because he is, he most  _definitely_ is, his balls are heavy, his stomach feels tight as a drum, and he’s balancing on the edge of a knife as he fights with himself for control.

“Let go,” she murmurs in his ear by way of response, before licking the shell of it with the tip of her tongue. “It’s okay, Ben.”

The sound of his name on her lips is all it takes.

And he’s done for.

 

* * *

 

Later, after he’s nearly drifted off to sleep again, his body curled protectively around hers in the narrow bed, she answers his question.

“Because I wanted to,” she whispers, so quietly he almost doesn’t hear. “You think you don't deserve good things, but I know you do.”

She falls asleep a moment later, and Ben has never loved the mountains more.

**Author's Note:**

> If you'd like to come say hello to me on tumblr my SW/Reylo blog is [jeenonamit](https://jeenonamit.tumblr.com/)! I'm also on twitter at [jeenonamit](https://twitter.com/jeenonamit/)


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